NTT Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion - Volume 72, Issue 3, 2018

The present article sketches the emergence of the scholarly conferences on the history of religion at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century. The focus is in particular on the ‘First International Congress on the History of Religions’ (Paris 1900) and the much smaller Leiden conference of 1912. By comparing these with one of the most famous conferences on religion in history – the World’s Parliament of Religions, organized in the context of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago – it is shown how the early historians of religion defined themselves as scholars over against those interested in religious dialogue and theology. Special attention is paid to the fact that some of these conferences were part of world exhibitions, which themselves had a distinct religious dimension.

In the course of history, many Old Testament books underwent revision before reaching their final form and, eventually, being canonized. For the most part, these transformations and interpolations are too subtleto be detected clearly. Sometimes, however, these revisions are larger and quite obvious, and invite the critical question: does the final version of a book represent the best text? This is not simply a question of literary or linguistic analysis; it is also one as to why the revision was made at all. This applies to the Book of Job. In the later chapters of this book the structure of the original debate becomes rather disproportional. Two large interpolations turn the book from a classic wisdom dispute into a kind of extended theodicy: the monologue(s) of Elihu (Job 32-37) and most probably the following ‘answer(s) from the storm’ (Job 38-39, 40:10-41:25). The latter passages seem to constitutea compilation of fragments from a once-separate wisdom poem, a kind of bestiary devoted to natural phenomena and the animal world. I claim that detecting the different theological layers and revisions in Job may help us to reconstruct the form and nature of the original wisdom debate.

Contributing to current initiatives to reassess European theorists of religion from a postcolonial perspective, this article locates Gerardus van der Leeuw (1890-1950) in South Africa at the inauguration of the Voortrekker Monument, problematizing his phenomenological concept of sacred place. On 16 December 1949 Van der Leeuw gave a speech at the inauguration of the Voortrekker Monument to convey the good wishes of the Dutch volk to the Afrikaner volk, celebrating with Afrikaner nationalists their victory over the Zulu king Dingaan more than a century earlier, and sharing the podium with D.F. Malan who had come to power in 1948 introducing more than 
40 years of apartheid in South Africa. The speech is analyzed by relating it to reports that Van der Leeuw wrote on his first visit to South Africa of almost three months in 1947 and his second visit in 1949, as well as pertinent concepts, particularly sacred place, in his phenomenological analyses of religion. By comparing and contrasting Van der Leeuw’s concept of sacred place with David Chidester’s critical concept of sacred place, focusing on the Voortrekker Monument as case study, I will offer a critique of Van der Leeuw’s concept of sacred place from a postcolonial perspective and South African location.